Seraphim Seanceby yun_oe

A miasma of sewage water from the nearby quarry somehow managed to make its way atop the cliff to Denise’s car in the church parking lot. The four puberty-infested friends hesitated inside the car for a moment until finally exiting the vehicle in unison, with the intention of running into the abandoned church as fast as they could to avoid death by sewage stench. Bordered by an overgrowth of weeds, the flimsy three planks of stairs led them up to a wooden door that was the color and texture of crusty, dried blood-- the entrance to a looming, religious behemoth.

Once inside, the derelict lobby of broken glass and graffitied walls greeted them in the scattered lighting of partially-boarded, broken windows. The lobby desk, a spray-painted masterpiece of bubble-lettered profanity, partially guarded the glass door that led to the chapel and Bible study rooms. Denise hesitated as the other three paced towards the shattered glass and carpeted floor, lingering by the entrance they had come in through.

“Can we raincheck on the angel summoning tonight? I can keep the car warmed up for after y’all are done! That’s a thing I can do instead, right?” Denise’s drawl merely emphasized the anxiety taking reign of her body.

Evan, leader of the three, scoffed at her comment, eyeing the turtlenecked girl up and down with steely hazel eyes. “C’mon Deni, how can you be afraid of an angel? They’re feathery men, God’s pigeons, bringers of light…”

Alex chuckled. “Sure would be nice to have some light, though, now that you mention it.”

Daphne sighed, folding her arms across her chest. “Look, Deni, if you’re keen on getting acquainted with the creepy forest inhabitants in the comfort of your car as they surround you and eliminate the only means of our escape from this place, be my guest.”

Denise shuddered. “You’re right. I should probably go say hi to Camille anyways,” she retorted quickly, Daphne’s creepy taunt effective. The four proceeded carefully towards the sanctuary, tiptoeing to dodge shards and debris to the open room that faintly echoed the hum of low-timbred singing.

“Is that Camille?” Evan whispered, huddling closer to his entourage and suddenly avoiding the dark worship hall by planting himself against the wall

“If it is, puberty’s changed her,” snorted Alex, jabbing his buddy in the ribcage while Denise not-so-subtly clung to his other arm.

Daphne, unfazed by the sound, marched to the doorway and squinted her eyes. “It’s Camille alright. Looks like she’s got some weird set up of boomboxes along with the rest of the kooky angel circle from the book drawn at the altar.”

Curiosity led them into the worship hall, their resounding footsteps trickling off of the tall stone walls and columns, murmuring between the wooden pews, and dying off at the decorated altar. The four teenagers stopped and watched in awe as Camille took her small mixture of chalk paint and earnestly stroked finishing touches on the elevated floor of the altar space in their chapel. A Gregorian chant emitted from the four boomboxes in a low murmur, facing the center of the  ritual ring. On the floor, the circular image of a coiled serpent tattooed with strange symbols was accompanied by triangles and squares and star shapes.

Camille finally looked up at them when she finished her illustrating: a tall, confident young woman in black, surrounded by the glow of dancing flickers of candles on her face, with a small array of religious statues lingering like anticipating children at her feet. A smile spread across her lips slowly-- the small twitches of her face to maintain said smile, however, led them all to have second thoughts.

“Hey guys.”

“So uh, Camjam, how long have you been working on this...this thing?” Evan inquired cautiously, shoving his hands into his jeans pockets and nodding at the setup.

“Four days straight. There were a lot of preparations I had to make for the ceremony…” At this remark, an abrupt fluttering noise emerged behind Camille and jolted the four friends from their position. “Live doves,” she reassured them with a chuckle. “Had to find twelve of them for the ritual.”

“What else did you need to get?” Denise quipped, still on edge and clinging to Alex.

“The nice thing is that we’re in church town central, which helped with supply gathering. I had to grab some thuribles...candles…” she turned, laying her eyes on the dove cage that was covered with brocade fabric. “Old priest’s robes.”

“Eye of newt, claw of tiger, hair of virgin,” Alex joked, trying to humor Denise out of her anxious shell.

“Head of bishop?” Daphne suggested, sharing a smirk with Camille. The two of them had an equally twisted way of teasing everyone into an eerie silence-- planting horrible little notions into the darkness of people’s minds.

“Well, I just wanted to say hello to you before I head back to the car, y’know, to...to get it ready in case we have to speed away from the monster that y’all summon!” Denise giggled nervously, inching away from Alex’s arm.

“D’you want someone to come with you, Deni?” Alex asked.

“N-no...I can run pretty fast to the car.”

“Be careful of the glass on your way out, Den!” retorted Evan.

“And say hello to those forest goblins for us!” exclaimed Daphne, with eyes following Denise’s silhouette as she sped out of the chapel like the track star she was.

Once Denise was out of sight, Camille picked up three smoking thuribles, offering them to the remaining friends.

“Shall we get started, then?”

---

Denise didn’t bother to stop and enjoy the scenic church hallway, now illumined by the dying sun as it melted into the trees; streams of light escaped from the branches outside and twinkled through the glass wall of the corridor, coloring the walls a rustic orange color. Denise leapt over little piles of debris, arriving back at the lobby where she took a moment to catch her breath. A moment she immediately regretted, as her mind’s concoctions caught up to her heaving, hunched body. Rustling came from under the lobby desk, and Denise, with fragile constitution, bolted for the door and slammed it behind her, running and fidgeting with the car keys in her pocket to unlock the vehicle before securing herself inside it.

Her station wagon, a car from the late ‘90s with a speck of mileage on it, sputtered when she started the engine. She threw in a cassette tape of droning piano music, leaning back in her seat to catch her breath yet again. Denise didn’t understand what the charm was in invoking the supernatural: she had seen enough horror movies, read enough ghost stories and heard enough religious lectures to know that the others were likely going to get possessed by a demon...or fail miserably and end up with a vestigial tail. Whichever came first.

She was curious, sure, but her prudent nature sucked the fun out of everything. She never bothered to eat a spoonful of cinnamon or smoke a cigarette because she knew better, but her rational decisions made her the outcast of the teenage population. The “mom” of her group of friends. And Denise didn’t mind so much-- sitting in the comfort of her leather-seated car while her friends did goodness knew what was a far more appealing alternative than being in the heat of the action.

She twirled tendrils of dark brown hair around her finger, observing the small details of her surroundings from the safety of her car: the cracked concrete of the parking lot with weeds and grass adorning the crevices, the chipped paint on the worn church sign that only had the outline of a cross and a few letters left, the dark, swaying trees along the perimeter of the abandoned place, the teetering, dark figure on the cliff of the quarry...

Denise blinked a couple times and subsequently rubbed her eyes for clarity as she focused on the cliff again. No, it was just her imagination running wild in her idle time and creating a form out of the shadowy rock striations from across the quarry. She checked her doors again though, ensuring they were locked with a muted click of the button on her armrest, and skimmed the backseats of her car, ardently confirming that there was nothing inside with her. Finally relaxing, she slumped back and closed her eyes, allowing the pitter-pattering piano melody to take her into a light sleep while faintly wondering how the ritual was going for everyone else.

---

Evan, Alex and Daphne stood stiffly in a loose semi-circle, swinging the fuming thuribles in unison as Camille moved two standing iron candelabras to either side of the dove cage, a trail of white wax dripping onto the stone elevation of the altar.

“So...a dead angel? Why not a living one, Cam?”

“Living angels can’t be summoned by humans because they can’t be bound or commanded by us. So we go the dead route.”

“And where does a dead angel come from? Bible study never said anything about that.”

Camille picked up the grimoire, leafing through pages as the three continued swinging the incense balls side to side. “It doesn’t really say...but there’s something here about how angels reside along the firmament--,”

“Firmament? You mean the glass dome?” said Alex, stifling a laugh. “You’re not proposing we summon some humanoid living outside the earth’s atmosphere, are you?”

“Wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibilities,” said Daphne dismissively, shrugging.

Camille cleared her throat impatiently, book in hand. “The preparations are done. Are we ready?”

Once the trio acquiesced, Camille whipped around to face the dove cage, extending an arm out towards it as she began an incomprehensible incantation within the book, accompanied by the Gregorian chants mumbling through the boombox speakers. The candles enclosed them in the chalked serpent circle, providing dim light in the now darkened worship hall. Evan, having adjusted to the rhythm of thurible swinging, chose to focus his attentions instead on the three large windows and iron cross set above them, as Camille recited the words faster and faster, outpacing the tempo of her accompaniment.

The doves began bashing against the cage, violently screeching at Camille’s voice; the flames blazed ferociously, melting wax down to the end of the candlewicks of all the candles until the room fell completely dark, and soon the chanting from Camille and the boomboxes faded to a final note. And then…

All of the sounds stopped.

---

A light rapping on the car window startled Denise from her light nap. She raised her head to look straight at Evan, who gave her a beaming smile from outside. Alex and Daphne gave her nods of acknowledgement.

“G’mornin’ sleepin’ beauty!”

“How’d the nap treat ya, princess?”

“Certainly couldn’t call it beauty sleep-- you still look the same, unfortunately.”

She groggily waved at her three friends. “Hey y’all...how’d it go?” she yawned, stretching in her seat.

“Would you believe it, nothin’ happened!” grumbled Alex. “We stood there, swingin’ incense balls like idiots, and the only thing that happened was the lights went out and the boomboxes stopped working!”

“It got really quiet for a second and then we all just burst out laughing,” chortled Evan, scratching the back of his head.

“It did scare me for a sec though,” admitted Daphne. “But we feel so much better now seeing yo. Mind if we go already? This place at night gives me the heebie jeebies.”

Denise arched a brow. “What about Camille? Doesn’t she need a ride back?” It finally dawned on Denise that her car was the only one in the parking lot, and that Camille’s silver convertible was nowhere to be found.

After a slight pause, Alex waved Denise’s comment off with his hand. “Nah, she parked out back, near the chapel. Y’know, so that she could bring in the stuff and set up beforehand.”

“Right...you didn’t just leave her alone back there, did you? At…” Denise checked her dashboard clock, “two in the morning! My mom’s gonna kill me!”

“Well, you oughta let us in before whatever out here kills us too,” quipped Daphne.

Denise forced a laugh. “Right...I’d still feel so much better if Camille left with us though. Y’know...to make sure she’s safe.”

Alex rattled the locked passenger door. “We get it, mom, you’re worried. Now let us in already before we freeze to death!”

Denise unlocked her car just as someone crashed through the wooden red door of the church. The tall figure, covered in feathers and blood, stumbled towards them, gurgling loudly in some foreign language. The three frantically jumped into Denise’s car, urging her with panicked voices to get as far away from the church as she could. She pulled the car into reverse, swinging her steering wheel with a dramatic jerk of her arm before yanking the gearshift to drive, ramming her foot into the gas pedal.

But the feathered horror slapped its grotesque body against Denise’s windshield as she started going forward, scraping what looked to be a human hand against the glass. Denise slowed the car, careful not to stop too abruptly and throw off the passenger flung onto the hood of her automobile, and took in enough of the sight to recognize…

“Camille?” She pulled the gear lever to park temporarily.

The figure gurgled in response, its face covered by a plethora of swollen birds’ wings surgically sewn to its skin and hair-- a characteristic that echoed with the rest of its feathered, bleeding body. 

“Wh-what happened? Who did this to you?” Denise studied the meticulous sewing work of the creature before her-- the way hundreds of little dove wings were attached to its taut skin, feathers spattered with a sanguine stain.

The creature painstakingly tapped a finger on the window, physically suggesting what Denise already suspected. She turned her head slowly, ready to face whatever demon was waiting in her backseat on her own time, and caught a glimpse of normality as she saw Evan’s jeans from the corner of her eye.

“What’re you waiting for?” asked Evan, leaning against the car window. “It’s two in the morning and you’re stoppin’ in the middle of the parking lot?”

“Yeah,” said Daphne, “What’s the hold up? You see a cat or somethin’?”

“Wh...” Denise turned back around, finding no feathered figure on her windshield. Rubbing her eyes again, she drove over a speed bump before rolling out of the church parking lot. “Sorry, guys, I don’t know what came over me, haha...”

She laughed and glanced at her rearview mirror, discovering a three-headed creature with strips of flesh for hair and covered in bloodied doves’ wings, gazing at her. And then…

All of the sounds stopped.

The angel joined Denise, Evan, Alex and Daphne together, four severed heads serenely resting on its lap as it sat, with the steering wheel turning as though led by a ghost driver.